Beneath the streetlights of his hometown in Munhall, Pennsylvania Ed started singing acapella with a group of friends. Born to John Oross, a steelworker at the United States steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania and Marion Oross a waitress at the White Tower restaurant in downtown Pittsburgh, Ed decided to pursue acting and singing. He is of Czechoslovakian descent and a veteran steelworker himself. Attending Munhall high school, now known as Steel Valley, Ed was an outstanding baseball player batting 351 in his senior year and an amateur AAU boxing champion before studying at the Pittsburgh Playhouse with Warren Galgore. Ed was offered a partial singing scholarship to study with Ralph Lewando in New York. Hopping on a Greyhound bus with $300 dollars in his pocket and 8 hours later the Pittsburgh native landed in “The Big Apple”. Wanting to perform and act Ralph Lewando suggested studying acting with legendary teachers Stella Adler and Uta Hagen. Later Ed became protégé to Miriam Goldina, the first women art director in the Russian Moscow Art Theater under Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Ed started his acting career at Lincoln Center and City Center with The Young People’sTheater under the direction of Margie Siggley, who was responsible for changing Oross to O’Ross. Soon he was performing the classics on the stage, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Gorky, Ionesco, Beckett and Chekhov. Working with such notable actors as Lord Laurenc Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, Madonna, in addition to a host of notables you can find on IMDB. He also performed under the direction of the best directors of his era; Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Donner, Walter Hill and Peter Lilienthal. Films include, Full Metal Jacket, The Cotton Club, Red Heat, Dick Tracy, The Hidden, Gangland, Lethal Weapon, Action Jackson, Universal Soldier and A Green Story. Voiceover’s, Men In Black (agent K), Army of One, Curious George, Justice League, “Company of Heros.” Ed performed in numerous television series as well. These credits can be found on IMDB and include the acclaimed HBO series “SIX FEET UNDER”. His performance earned him the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding performance.
Today Ed works with two groups of young filmmakers in developing projects as a writer, director, producer and actor, utilizing the numerous talents he has acquired in his career wherever needed. The result of his life experiences is a heartwarming screenplay he wrote titled “The Garlic Café” a labor of love and passion he has always envisioned shooting in his hometown of Munhall, Pennsylvania. As Ed tells it “it’s a feel good film” the types of story we don’t see often enough in movies today.